Remember Darren Aranofsky was gonna do this new Wolverine movie? He’d done THE WRESTLER and he was the original director on THE FIGHTER and then he named it THE WOLVERINE, but he had to drop out to deal with The Child Custody. From the roll he was on I bet he would’ve made a hell of a movie, but his replacement James Mangold (COPLAND, 3:10 TO YUMA) came up with something pretty interesting too. For his movie the title is representative of the whole approach: strip away the convoluted series-connecting business indicated in the title of the last one (X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE) and just focus everything on this character, this Wolverine. The Wolverine.
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Posts Tagged ‘ninjas’
The Wolverine
Monday, July 29th, 2013Ninja III: The Domination Blu-Ray review
Tuesday, June 25th, 2013
One of our nation’s perennial VHS favorites, NINJA III: THE DOMINATION, has recently made the transition to digital and high definition disc type formats courtesy of the heroes at Shout Factory. Check out my review of the new blu-ray over on Daily Grindhouse. If you also want to read a review I wrote of the movie a couple years ago then you can click here.
DOA: Dead or Alive
Tuesday, November 20th, 2012
DOA: DEAD OR ALIVE is the name of a tournament where the best fighters from around the world are invited to come stay on a remote island where they are pitted against each other in un-refereed fights with few rules. It’s like Mortal Kombat except not interdimensional, no monsters, during daylight, and not to the death. So they probly could’ve picked a better name. Maybe just “A.”
They’re wedded to this DOA title, though. They got the logo on parachutes, computers, signs, even a volleyball. That’s the kind of island we’re dealing with here, it has custom made non-tournament related sporting gear. These are professionals. (read the rest of this shit…)
There’s gonna be a NINJA 2
Wednesday, October 10th, 2012
Clint Morris at Moviehole is reporting the great news that Nu Image, Isaac Florentine and Scott Adkins are reuniting for a sequel to NINJA – or NINJ* as I’ve always spelled it (the asterisk is a throwing star) – expected to film early next year.
I know NINJA isn’t as popular as the UNDISPUTEDs, but it’s a favorite of mine. It has many great fights, an excellent villain with good motivations, and a few pulpy touches like a villainous oil company/cult. My favorite thing about it is that the opposing ninjas are fighting over a box of weapons. Not magic weapons, just some old weapons. It’s a matter of honor and tradition, nothing to do with saving the world or saving lives or anything. It’s like a modern Cannon movie, except way better than most Cannon movies like it. Can you name a better movie about a white guy adopted by a ninja clan? There are many white ninja movies, but I can’t think of a better one.
And I know they’re gonna try to take the credit away from him, but Obama can hold his head up proud because NINJA and NINJA 2 happened under his watch.
Here’s my original review from 2009.
Miami Connection
Wednesday, June 13th, 2012
Y.K. Kim is a motivational speaker, author of books with titles like Winning Is a Choice and The New American Dream. He sells a 5-CD set called U.S. National Exercise that boasts “It’s amazing! You can even exercise while driving without any extra time!” On his websight he’s quoted as saying, “Success: 1% is the idea, 99% is action. Put your goals into action, never and ever give up until you achieve your goals.”
In 1987 his goal was to make an action movie.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Monday, May 21st, 2012
TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES (1990) is a martial arts fantasy produced by Raymond Chow and Golden Harvest (ENTER THE DRAGON), with excellent animatronic and puppet effects by Jim Henson, and impressively agile fight and stunt sequences involving people in full body rubber creature suits. It has early performances by Elias Koteas and Sam Rockwell, and stuntwork by Ernie Reyes Jr. One major problem, though: it’s about teenage mutant ninja turtles.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Norwegian Ninja
Sunday, September 4th, 2011
I forget who it was that put this on my radar a while back when it was a big deal in Norway, but they were right, this is an interesting movie. NORWEGIAN NINJA is hard to describe. You’d kind of need to see it for yourself to understand. So I’ll try to explain it enough that you might want to see it for yourself and then understand.
Arne Treholt is apparently a real historical figure in Norway, a former Norwegian Labour Party politician who was photographed with KGB agents and sentenced to 20 years in the country’s biggest espionage case ever. Thomas Cappelen Malling is the author of a popular humorous book that purported to be a ninja field manual written by that guy. Not sure how that works exactly, but sounds intriguing. Now Cappelen Malling has directed this movie which is sort of an alternate history of Norway that argues that Arne was not a spy, he was set up in a conflict between the left-leaning side of the government that he was part of and the rightwingers, called “Stay Behind,” who do anything they can to help America fight the Russians, including faking terrorist attacks to make people fear commies. (read the rest of this shit…)
The Warrior’s Way
Saturday, July 23rd, 2011
Remember THE WARRIOR’S WAY? Kind of an under the radar cowboys ‘n samurais movie from last year, director with no track record, Geoffrey Rush and Kate Bosworth in the cast, hard to know what to expect from that weird combination of factors. I heard it was pretty good, but I also heard it was one of those movies that’s pretty much all done in front of green screens. I almost went to see it for the week or two it was playing in theaters, but I chickened out, waited for the spinning disc. (read the rest of this shit…)
Ninja III: The Domination
Wednesday, December 8th, 2010
A few years ago when I wrote about ENTER THE NINJA and REVENGE OF THE NINJA I know everybody told me I had to watch part 3 and it was hilarious and all that. And I always intended to get to it but see I was on a serious ninja kick, I wanted real ninja action and not just some dumb bullshit to laugh at because a girl from BREAKIN’ gets possessed by a ninja.
But forgive me, man. I was on the outside. There was no way to really know without seeing it that NINJA III is a must-see.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Heroes of the East
Friday, November 12th, 2010
aka CHALLENGE OF THE NINJA, SHAOLIN VS. NINJA, SHAOLIN CHALLENGES NINJA
HEROES OF THE EAST is a really top notch Shaw Brothers production that’s half all-time classic martial arts movie, half romantic comedy. There are cultural differences that separate it from a Katherine Heigl movie besides just martial arts, the main one being arranged marriage. In a Heigl picture she’s forced to be with a guy she initially hates because of a baby, here it’s because of powerful Chinese and Japanese business families trying to expand their reach by making their kids marry each other.
(read the rest of this shit…)
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